The following table provides details of availability for microcode updates currently planned by Intel. Changes since the previous version are highlighted in yellow.

LEGEND:

Production Status:
• Planning – Intel has not yet determined a schedule for this MCU.
• Pre-beta – Intel is performing early validation for this MCU.
• Beta – Intel has released this production signed MCU under NDA for all customers to validate.
• Production – Intel has completed all validation and is authorizing customers to use this MCU in a production environment.
• Stopped – After a comprehensive investigation of the microarchitectures and microcode capabilities for these products, Intel has determined to not release microcode updates for these products for one or more reasons including, but not limited to the following:

• Micro-architectural characteristics that preclude a practical implementation of features mitigating Variant 2 (CVE-2017-5715)
• Limited Commercially Available System Software support
• Based on customer inputs, most of these products are implemented as “closed systems” and therefore are expected to have a lower likelihood of
exposure to these vulnerabilities.

Pre-Mitigation Production MCU:
• For products that do not have a Production MCU with mitigations for Variant 2 (Spectre), Intel recommends using this version of MCU. This does not impact mitigations for Variant 1 (Spectre) and Variant 3 (Meltdown).

STOP deploying these MCU revs:
• Intel recommends to discontinue using these select versions of MCU that were previously released with mitigations for Variant 2 (Spectre) due to system stability issues.
• Lines with “***” were previously recommended to discontinue use. Subsequent testing by Intel has determined that these were unaffected by the stability issues and have been re-released without modification.

The list of CPU families Intel won't patch are:

• Bloomfield
• Bloomfield Xeon
• Clarksfield
• Gulftown
• Harpertown Xeon C0
• Harpertown Xeon E0
• Jasper Forest
• Penryn/QC
• SoFIA 3GR
• Wolfdale C0
• Wolfdale M0
• Wolfdale E0
• Wolfdale R0
• Wolfdale Xeon C0
• Wolfdale Xeon E0
• Yorkfield
• Yorkfield Xeon

Read more (PDF): https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-conten...e-guidance.pdf

Posted By: Brink
04 Apr 2018